I woke up to a sharp, precise kick to my ribs.
"Get up," Silver ordered impatiently, his shadow blocking the light of the training courtyard. "You leave today."
I sat up with a start, swallowing a groan as the muscle ache from the deaths of my last training session screamed in protest. I looked around, confused. The house was in complete, organized chaos. Through the open door, I saw Laura and Arthur already prepped and perfectly aligned in the hallway, as if they had been waiting for hours.
Shit… I'm still here with nothing ready! I thought in panic.
I sprinted to my room, ignoring the sharp pains shooting through my body, and threw on the first tactical outfit I could find: a pair of lightweight, durable black pants and a tight white compression tank top.
I needed something that wouldn't restrict my movement if a fight broke out of nowhere. I strapped a small leather tactical pouch to my waist and safely tucked the Queen's metallic scroll inside. A heavy backpack would only turn me into a slow target.
When I returned to the living room, I noticed Laura carried no weapon at all; only her sharp, focused, lupine gaze. Arthur was also unarmed and in absolute silence, his thick arms crossed over his granite chest.
Silver watched us with a faint smile of approval before handing me a worn scroll.
"Here is the map of Lavinsk and the surrounding lands," he said calmly, though his tone carried the weight of a military order.
"The elven kingdom lies to the south. The journey is long. And remember everything I taught you about navigation once you leave the main routes protected by the gods."
I took the map, feeling the cold weight of responsibility settle into my hands.
I had spent the last few years brutally training my body on a dark planet and getting beaten to a pulp in this very house... but even so, almost everything I truly knew about the world and raw survival came from my father. He was the one who taught me how to read worn maps, use compasses, and navigate by sniffing the shifts in the night winds of our village.
And so, we departed.
We left behind the colossal golden gates of Lavinsk. I felt the imposing aura and the smell of ozone from the capital grow increasingly distant at our backs, replaced by the raw, wild air of the unexplored territories.
For the first two days, silence reigned almost absolute. My muscles still burned from the exhaustion of the scythe girl, but the constant walking forced my body to adapt on the fly. Arthur took the vanguard, carving a path through endless plains of bluish grass with heavy strides.
Laura flanked us, her lupine senses picking up the slightest rustle in the vegetation.
But unfortunately, we didn't have infinite supplies. We needed to hunt.
On the second afternoon, we were ambushed by a pack of scaly, six-legged felines. Before I could even draw my sword, Laura had already ripped the throats out of two of them, and Arthur had crushed the skull of a third with a single punch.
That was our dinner.
We set up camp near a lake so crystalline it looked like a mirror of the night sky. I was put in charge of cleaning the meat and roasting it over a makeshift campfire, while Laura filtered our drinking water using some porous leaves she recognized.
I sat near the fire, skewering a piece of alien meat with a stick, and stared into the flames. My mind was boiling with a question that had been hammering away at me since Lavinsk.
"There's something I don't get," I said aloud, breaking the sound of the wind rattling the trees.
Arthur raised his dark eyes from the other side of the fire. Laura, who was devouring her portion almost raw, paused and stared at me.
"What is it?" she asked with her mouth full.
"Silver can fly," I started, gesturing with the stick. "Riku too, I saw it in the tournament. Even Elfhing hovered. You two are pureblood gods... why have we been walking for days, burning energy and hunting in the middle of the woods, instead of just flying straight South?"
Arthur let out a low grunt and shifted his gaze back to the flames, his expression darkening even more.
Laura let out a bitter laugh and tossed a bone into the grass.
"Trust me, Suki, walking on the ground isn't a choice," she grumbled, rubbing the back of her neck. "It's one of the rules of Silver's training."
"Training?" I asked, confused. "He blocked your powers?"
"It's not a block, it's a ban," Laura explained, her frustration evident.
"Suki, for pure gods like us, flying is more natural than breathing. We literally learn to levitate before taking our first step as babies. The master says flight makes us arrogant, that it disconnects us from gravity and the raw, brute force of the world."
She sighed and looked down at her own silver fist.
"Being forced to walk on our own two feet is the worst part of his training. It's torture."
I looked down at my own bandaged hands.
My aura pulsed weakly beneath my skin, responding to my heartbeat.
My mother's blood. My divine side.
"Do you guys think..." I muttered, hesitating for a second. "Do you think I'll be able to fly one day?"
Arthur, who had seemed to be ignoring the conversation, broke his silence. His granite voice sounded surprisingly sincere.
"For you, I believe it's a matter of time. Walking will become your last resort once you truly start flying. But until then, you are still half-human. And humans walk."
And so we walked. A lot.
The journey changed drastically on the fourth day. The smooth plains gave way to a chaotic biome of rocky gorges and dense fog that blotted out the sun.
That was when their divine dependency on flight exacted its toll.
Trapped on the ground and blinded by the mist, Laura and Arthur became disoriented.
They didn't know how to read the terrain without seeing it from above.
We practically walked in circles for hours inside a labyrinthine canyon.
Arthur's frustration was nearing the point where he looked ready to punch the stone walls just to force a path through.
"Stop. Let me guide," I requested, pulling Silver's crumpled map from my tactical pouch.
I knelt on the damp ground and pulled out a simple brass compass—the only physical thing I had left of my father, which happened to be in my pocket that day.
I moistened the tip of my finger and held it in the air, feeling the microscopic shift in the damp air currents sinking through the crevices.
"We are heading against the flow of groundwater," I explained, tracing a route on the parchment. "My dad used to say the fog always lies to the eyes, but never to the wind. If we follow the cold air current, we'll be out of this canyon before nightfall."
Laura looked at me, impressed. Arthur simply agreed with a nod.
I took the vanguard. And just like the old days in the village, my father's navigation saved us from a tight spot.
We crossed the gorge and left the fog behind at the exact moment the sun began to set on the fifth day.
It was then that our march came to an abrupt halt.
Up ahead, dominating the entire southern horizon, the world seemed to have erected an impossible wall.
A barrier so absurdly colossal and dark that it swallowed the starry sky.
Laura narrowed her glowing eyes, genuine curiosity etched on her face. "Is that... a mountain range?" she whispered, confused.
"It wasn't on Lavinsk's map."
"It's not rock," Arthur disagreed, squinting his granite eyes. "The texture is wrong. It's a sleeping colossal monster. A stone Titan embedded in the earth."
I took a few steps forward, moving past them. I focused my vision, letting my aura sharpen my human senses to their absolute limit.
I watched the irregular silhouettes at the absolute peak of that black mass swaying slowly against the clouds, like thick hair.
"No," I said, my breath hitching at the sheer scale of it. "You're both wrong."
"Then what is it?" Arthur asked, tense.
"Those ridges way up there aren't moving rocks. They're leaves," I replied, unable to tear my eyes away from the vertical abyss.
"It's not a mountain. They're trees. That entire wall... is the Black Forest."
I hastily unrolled Silver's map once more, straining my eyes in the twilight.
I ran my finger over the ink lines detailing the South. In the center of the territory, the massive Castle of Elfhing was drawn in miniature.
But the realization finally hit me when I looked closely at the ring of thick, dark ink completely encircling the castle.
In Lavinsk, the gods built impassable stone walls and colossal gates of pure gold to protect themselves.
But not here.
The map made it perfectly clear that the Black Forest wasn't a mere natural habitat or a simple patch of woods. It was a living wall. An absurd, organic fortification, intentionally cultivated over millennia to embrace, isolate, and protect the heart of the elven empire from absolutely any threat from the outside world.
"They didn't build walls of stone..." I muttered, stowing the parchment back into my tactical pouch, a cold knot forming in my stomach. "They let nature itself grow until it became an impassable barricade that swallows the sky."
Laura swallowed hard beside Arthur.
"If these are just the trees acting as the gate..." she whispered, her voice tight, her eyes locked on the darkness beneath the leaves. "What the hell did they lock inside?"
None of us had the answer. And we decided not to wait for dawn to find out.
We resumed our march, descending the long dirt hill toward that immensity of wood and shadows.
The trek from that vantage point down to the base of the forest still took a few hours, and with every mile we advanced, the temperature plummeted drastically.
"Do you think the elves are going to welcome us?" I asked, breaking the silence as I kicked some loose stones on the path.
"I mean... we are official envoys of the Queen, right?"
Arthur let out a harsh noise from the back of his throat, the sound of granite scraping against granite.
"Elves are ancient and extremely proud beings," he replied without looking back.
"They believe their longevity and connection to the light and the wind makes them superior even to younger pure gods. Don't expect smiles and friendly banquets."
"Oh, stop being so grumpy, Arthur," Laura joked, walking with her hands behind her head, trying to lighten the group's tension.
"They are Lavinsk's allies. As long as you don't go around smashing their sacred trees with those stone fists of yours, I doubt they'll try to skewer us with arrows."
"I am far more concerned about what lives on the borders of this forest than the elves themselves," Arthur countered, his tone deadly serious.
"Yeah, but I think you guys forgot that Queen Elfhing herself tried to kill me during the tournament," I said, getting a bit more nervous, clearly remembering the crushing presence she had.
Arthur nodded. "That might be a problem."
Laura chimed in. "Be optimistic, boys. That wasn't personal."
When we finally reached the tree line, the starry sky simply vanished, swallowed by the titanic canopies.
The wind flowing between the trunks was freezing, sharp, and carried a heavy moisture that clung to the skin and dampened our clothes.
The roots of those trees weren't normal.
They erupted from the ground and twisted like serpents the size of two-story houses.
Stepping in there felt like walking straight into the mouth of a green and black abyss.
We were treading carefully through the tall, damp grass, looking for the safest gap between the trunks to enter the darkness, when Laura's footsteps came to an abrupt halt.
The trace of a playful smirk was still on her face, but it vanished in a millisecond.
Her body bristled unnaturally. Her ears pinned flat against her skull.
She jerked her head up and sniffed the damp night air, her pupils dilating in the dark until they completely swallowed her irises.
"That smell... blood," she whispered, her voice trembling with predatory instinct as her silver claws slipped from her fingers with a metallic snikt.
"And there's a lot of it. Something just happened nearby."
Before Arthur or I could react, she vanished through the ancient roots in a blur of speed.
We immediately sprinted after her, preparing for whatever might come. The sound of damp leaves being crushed echoed beneath our boots as we pushed deeper and deeper into the suffocating forest.
Thick thorns, twisted branches shaped like claws, and exposed roots rose up like traps everywhere.
Nature itself was trying to cast us out.
Then we found the source of the smell.
I stopped dead in my tracks, almost stumbling backward when the tip of my boot stepped on something strangely soft and gave way.
I looked down.
My stomach churned and rose into my throat.
It was a severed arm. The cracked bone of the forearm was brutally exposed, gleaming in the gloom.
The dirt floor was soaked in puddles of fresh blood. Dozens of mutilated bodies lay scattered across the jagged clearing.
Judging by the drooping pointed ears and simple woven clothes, it had been an elven caravan, probably nomadic families, trying to cross the forest for shelter.
But now...
Only unrecognizable pieces of meat and shredded tents remained.
"What the fuck kind of massacre is this?!" Laura gagged, covering her mouth with both hands and turning her face violently to the side.
Her shoulders shook.
She squeezed her eyes shut tightly, torn between blind fury and an uncontrollable urge to vomit.
I stared at her for a second, genuinely surprised.
Is this the same girl who screamed at the top of her lungs in the competition stands, demanding I mercilessly kill everyone? I thought, watching her normally fierce face completely lose its color.
Laura's savagery had a clear limit.
Watching the brutality of a tournament was one thing, but real carnage... she wasn't the cold-blooded monster I had imagined.
There was a lot of humanity behind those claws, or a lot of history I didn't know yet.
But, turning my own eyes back to the clearing, I couldn't judge her.
The thick stench of iron, exposed entrails, and fresh death hit my face like a physical punch.
My own stomach violently twisted. I had to clench my jaw, close my eyes for a second, and swallow the burning, acidic bile rising in my throat.
The scene was pure horror. This wasn't the outcome of a battle. There were no drawn weapons or signs they had tried to defend themselves.
There were only shredded tents and pieces of families scattered in the mud, torn apart as if they were fragile meat toys in the hands of something colossal.
"Mixed elves... nomads," Arthur concluded coldly, the only one among us who appeared unshaken. He crouched beside a splintered log, his granite face impassive before the hellscape. "Makes sense they were using the edges of the forest to try and escape something."
I carefully scanned the perimeter, forcing my mind to ignore the nausea.
There were deep footprints mixed into the blood. Many footprints.
But they were definitely neither elven nor human. They were heavy tracks, yet with torn grooves at the tips, indicating claws designed for traction, momentum, and monstrous speed.
A freezing chill slid down my spine.
This wasn't a human army. Nor a rebel god, I concluded, swallowing hard. Some kind of apex predator hunting in a pack?
The forest around us began to howl ominously.
Shadows moved silently across the high branches.
The freezing wind spiraled around our group in a sudden, threatening vortex.
Without needing a single word of command, Laura, Arthur, and I instantly formed a tight defensive triangle.
We stood back-to-back, guards up, ready for a potential fight.
The silence fell heavy.
Branches snapped high above. Light footsteps rustled through the leaves. Bowstrings being drawn to their limits creaked in the gloom.
Then a cold, authoritative female voice cut through the forest air.
"You had better not move a single muscle, strangers. Otherwise, thirty arrows will pierce your lungs in the next second."
I scanned the towering trees above with narrowed eyes.
That was when the camouflage dropped, and I finally understood.
Elves.
Dozens of them.
They were hanging upside down, perched on thin branches, and crouching behind trunks.
They wore cloaks woven with real moss and leaves, blending their own auras into the energy of nature itself with lethal perfection.
We were surrounded by elite archers with their sights locked on our skulls.
"Easy! Lower your weapons, we were sent by Lavinsk!" Laura growled firmly, baring her teeth, though she didn't lower her silver claws.
From atop a massive branch right in front of us, the elf who appeared to be the leader leaped gracefully down to the blood-stained ground.
She landed as lightly as a bird, making absolutely no sound, and slowly lowered her own bow.
Her pale eyes gleamed under the faint moonlight filtering through the canopy.
"And what are the names of the children sent by the gods of Lavinsk?" she asked, her tone disdainful.
"I'm Laura. These two quiet idiots are Arthur and Su—"
"Suki, right?" The elven leader interrupted her, her voice dropping a pitch. A cold, perfectly aligned smile loaded with dark intent formed on her face.
That name coming out of her mouth like that made the air around us weigh a ton. The tension skyrocketed to an unbearable level.
Laura growled low in the back of her throat, bending her knees and sinking her silver claws into the air, her whole body trembling like a coiled spring ready to explode. Arthur didn't make a sound, but he sank the soles of his boots into the damp earth and tensed his torso, his granite muscles grinding as he braced for a catastrophic impact.
We all felt the same murderous intent radiating from her.
She was going to attack.
I used that millisecond of deadly silence to focus on her face under the dim moonlight.
My stomach turned to ice.
The pieces began violently snapping together in my head.
That sharp, predatory facial structure... Those pale, wild eyes... That aura focused on manipulating the winds... I swallowed hard, feeling a bead of cold sweat run down my temple.
Wait. She is identical to the girl from the tournament. She looks exactly like Sallys.
And before my brain could scream for Arthur and Laura to fall back, an invisible gust of wind crossed the gap.
She didn't run. She simply tore through the distance.
None of us could react. Before Arthur could throw a punch or Laura could close her claws, the elven leader shattered our impenetrable defensive triangle as if we were sluggish statues.
When my mind finally processed the space, she was already standing less than a foot from my face, perfectly positioned inside our formation.
She extended her gloved hand and squeezed my right hand with absurd brute force. I felt the bones in my fingers start to creak dangerously under her thin, freezing grip.
Her smile grew warm, but she tilted her head slightly in a disturbingly polite greeting and whispered:
"Thank you very much... for killing my younger sister, Sallys."
What? I thought.
The memory of Sallys's hot blood exploding over my foot in the arena ravine invaded my mind like a physical blow.
The resemblance exploded before my eyes. They were the same wild eyes. The same sharp, predatory facial structure. Only older.
And infinitely more hardened.
"I am Sillys," the elf declared in a loud, cold voice, completely ignoring the imminent danger of death surrounding her as she loosened her grip on my hand.
"The eldest daughter of the Elven Queen is a permanent exile from this pathetic kingdom."
An exile? I repeated mentally, trying to keep the shock from paralyzing me as I processed the avalanche of threats all at once.
I took a deep breath, forced my heart rate to slow, and raised my free hand to Laura and Arthur, signaling for them to lower their stances.
I swallowed hard and forced myself to nod calmly at Sillys.
"Come with me," Sillys ordered, turning her back to us without the slightest hesitation and gesturing to her hidden soldiers.
"I will take you to my refuge inside the forest. Lower your bows, boys."
Laura, Arthur, and I exchanged heavy, silent glances. A simple nod from Arthur was enough to confirm what we were all thinking.
This could be a brutal but genuine hospitality, or the most perfect trap ever laid by a sister thirsty for revenge.
The elven leader turned her back and began to march into the dark interior of the woods. All around, the dozens of hidden archers simply vanished into the shadows.
Without a verbal command, without breaking a twig. They melted back into the vegetation as if they had never existed.
The three of us followed closely behind, keeping our shoulders tense.
With every step we took into the heart of the Black Forest, nature seemed to swallow the light around us. The colossal canopy completely blocked out the sky and the stars.
The only illumination came from bioluminescent fungi glowing a sickly hue of green and blue, spread like veins across the gigantic roots.
The air grew thick, smelling of ancient moss, wet earth, and decay.
It was a purely oppressive environment.
The forest wasn't dead, but it sounded like a predator holding its breath.
The silence was crushing, torn only by unsettling noises.
Millennia-old wood creaked high above, sounding exactly like giant bones snapping in the dark.
The wind hissed through the gaps in the trunks, creating whistles that sounded like ghostly whispers right beside your ear.
Every now and then, the sound of something heavy dragging itself through the distant foliage made the hair on my arms stand up, and I saw Laura's ears swivel frantically, trying to track the threat.
We walked under that suffocating tension for almost half an hour.
Sillys led the way a few feet ahead.
Her footsteps were literally surreal. Unlike our heavy boots that crushed the vegetation, she floated over the terrain; her soft leather soles didn't break a single twig, didn't make a single dead leaf crunch.
But despite her silence, the image of the mangled clearing wouldn't leave my mind. The smell of hot blood still felt burned into the tip of my nose.
I couldn't stand that tomb-like silence anymore.
"About the dead people back there..." I commented in a low voice, quickening my pace slightly to approach her ghostly silhouette.
"My soldiers are already gathering what's left of the bodies," Sillys answered with a dark weight in her voice.
"They will receive proper funeral rites according to our forest traditions. They were slaughtered by a pack of Taranpus... the absolute kings of these woods. Our supreme predators."
Her gaze dropped to the rotting leaves on the ground.
"Their entire species hibernates deeply underground for nine long months. When they finally wake up... the accumulated hunger of almost a year leaves them driven mad and relentless."
She sighed bitterly, a sound that resembled rusting metal grinding.
"Unfortunately, only elven warriors purely trained for the slaughter are capable of hunting these monsters within their own territory. And even then... not all soldiers come back in one piece."
While she spoke, I forced my eyes to adapt to the dark and observed her group of scouts marching around us.
The shock hit me hard.
Dented and patched leather armor. Thin bodies covered in bandages soiled with mud and dried blood. Wounds that looked like they had been cauterized with makeshift forest fires.
But the worst part was their eyes. Sunken, terrified stares completely devoid of hope.
And Sillys herself looked no different beneath her rigid posture. Thin shoulders subtly curved under the crushing weight of leadership amidst the doom, her face pale from obvious malnutrition.
"Seems like things haven't been very peaceful around here," I muttered quietly, feeling the heavy guilt of our mission.
"We haven't known peace since the season started. They can smell sweat and blood from miles away," Sillys admitted honestly, her voice faltering in a brief moment of vulnerability.
"Right now, I am without my elite warriors. I came alone to look for this patrol. The few brave, wounded soldiers I still have here can barely stall a single Taranpus pup."
Her voice thickened, regaining absolute control of her emotions in the blink of an eye.
The fleeting pain vanished, replaced by the calculating coldness of a leader.
"But do not mistake the carnage you saw back there for weakness on our part," Sillys warned, glancing over her shoulder with a sharp, cutting gleam evaluating the three of us.
"We know the price of living in this forest. Hunger is constant, and we bleed every night to the beasts. Those who lacked the stomach for the true slaughter have already deserted and fled north like cowards in recent weeks."
She raised her chin, her arrogant, elven pride sparking in the forest's gloom.
"The men standing by my side are not clean soldiers meant to parade around in luxurious castles like Lavinsk's. They are wounded, exhausted, and they fight in the mud. But they obey my commands blindly. They know death intimately, and they will kill anything that threatens our survival before dawn. Do not forget that while you walk in my territory."
At that exact moment, as if to test the leader's iron words, an exhausted soldier at the rear of our group tripped over his own weak legs and collapsed onto exposed roots with a muffled groan of pain.
Laura reacted instantly, her protective side bulldozing right over her suspicion.
She rushed to the elf before any other guard could intervene and hoisted him up with ease, draping his arm over her own shoulder.
"Easy there, kid... don't push your body any harder than necessary," she said softly, ignoring Sillys's hard glare.
"I'll help you walk."
The scene around me dismantled the elf's facade of control. It no longer just screamed of despair; it reeked of imminent death, cadaverous faces, makeshift bone weapons, and genuine starvation.
Sillys could try to mask the situation with speeches about loyalty and ruthless strength so as not to show us weakness, but the truth was branded in the eyes of her soldiers.
This was no longer a simple message-delivery mission.
It was a war, and Elfhing wasn't supporting her daughter.
Sillys was the last rotting wooden beam desperately trying to convince everyone that the ceiling of horror wouldn't collapse on their heads.
Why did you send me here, Queen of the Gods? I thought.
Before I could follow that train of thought...
The entire forest floor sank violently beneath my feet.
Massive branches, thick as temple pillars, snapped and broke high above.
The colossal trees bent under the massive impact of something gigantic landing nearby.
Arthur instantly looked up, planting his soles into the dirt, fists clenched and ready.
Laura cursed and carefully laid the wounded soldier behind a thick trunk.
Then the roar erupted.
A demonic, guttural sound that seemed to vibrate directly in my bones, tearing through the surrounding leaves and silencing the rest of the forest.
Something leaped from the vertical darkness with absurd force.
The Taranpus.
A monstrous beast standing almost thirteen feet tall, covered in thick, matted fur, white as dead snow.
Its anatomy was a nightmare designed solely to shred.
Its massive jaw gaped open mid-leap, lined with three jagged rows of yellow, serrated teeth that looked like shattered blades, dripping acid.
Even under the moonlight, none of us had sensed the presence of that mountain of muscle until it was too late.
Its predatory instinct was absolute.
And without hesitation, the creature launched itself into a lethal dive straight at Sillys.
But it picked the wrong target.
Before the jaws could snap shut and bite the elven leader in half, Sillys's tired expression evaporated, replaced by an ancient hatred.
She took a step back, raised her bare hands, and pulled the air.
A divine, majestic, and blinding bow formed between her fingers.
It wasn't made of wood.
It was woven entirely from ultra-condensed cosmic winds. As if the storm itself and the fury of destruction had taken solid form in her hands.
"CELESTIAL ARROW!"
Sillys roared, her pale eyes shining like dead stars, and released the string of pure air.
The pressurized arrow exploded forward with a supersonic screech that deafened us all.
The oxygen within a fifteen-foot radius detonated from the sheer change in atmospheric pressure.
The massive Taranpus wasn't just pierced; it was physically annihilated in mid-air.
The beast's massive body popped, reduced to a bloody cloud and countless shredded pieces of meat and bone that rained down over the vegetation.
The impact didn't stop at the monster.
The invisible arrow continued its path, obliterating dozens of colossal trees as if they were twigs and carving a smoking, gigantic trench over three hundred feet long into the floor of the Black Forest.
The secondary shockwave destabilized our entire group.
I was hurled violently backward into the bushes, but I propelled myself forward again, my survival instincts screaming as I saw the sky of debris forming above.
A mist of boiling blood mixed with dust and pulverized dirt.
Large, lethal splinters of shattered wood rained down like projectiles over our heads, aiming directly for the wounded elves and the healers lying on the ground.
I saw an oak splinter the size of a pillar plummeting too fast toward the wounded soldier Laura was helping.
I didn't have time to think.
I channeled the energy into my feet and lunged into its trajectory with my blade, delivering a brutal upward slash.
The steel sang as it met the solid wood, and the trunk exploded into harmless splinters in mid-air.
Beside me, Laura was already in motion, spinning like a storm.
Her claws sliced and deflected the larger splinters with millimeter precision, ensuring nothing touched the injured patients.
We worked in instinctive sync for a few seconds, clearing the bloody sky above the refugee camp.
Until the red mist finally began to settle and everything calmed down, and then I saw it.
Sillys was on her knees, slowly dispersing the wind currents of the ethereal bow.
Her thin arms shook uncontrollably.
Her breath came in dry, ragged gasps, and a solitary drop of blood trickled from the corner of her pale mouth.
"That was just... a Taranpus scout..." she murmured in a hoarse voice, struggling to stand.
She coughed, spraying blood onto the dirt, wiped her lips with the back of her hand, and looked back with calculated coldness.
"My sincere apologies to the envoys of Lavinsk for the destruction. Exhaustion makes me misjudge the weight of my aura."
Then, ignoring her body's own limits, she calmly dusted off her torn robes and resumed walking, forcing herself to lead the way through the bloody crater she had just opened.
She was limping, but pushing hard not to show it.
We kept marching for another forty exhausting minutes down the devastated corridor freshly carved by her attack.
Then, finally, the suffocating forest gave way.
A massive, hidden clearing revealed itself, nestled beneath the protective embrace of the gigantic roots of an immense central tree that looked as old as the world itself.
It was the rebel elven fortress.
Dozens of rustic houses precariously woven between thick roots and enchanted vines, whose golden glow was fading.
Fragile bridges formed of living branches connected the huts in the canopy of the smaller trees.
Scouts armed with patched bows guarded every possible opening in the wall of leaves.
The exact moment Sillys stepped past the perimeter of shadows and entered the village, the resistance reacted.
Dozens of wounded, amputated, and exhausted elves dragged themselves from the mud and knelt with their heads bowed before their leader—the greatest sign of absolute respect they had left.
Healers in aprons blackened by dried blood ran frantically, panic etched on their faces, toward the unconscious soldier Laura was still carrying on her shoulders.
I saw elven children with soot-stained faces peeking from behind the roots, their eyes glazed with hunger, staring directly at the small tactical pouch strapped to my waist.
I saw dozens of wounded lying on the bare dirt floor, groaning with fever while a single healer wept silently, lacking enough bandages for everyone.
The atmosphere wasn't that of a refuge.
It was pure mourning and decay.
That was no isolated sanctuary in the forest.
It was the last breath of a race fighting on the brink of total collapse.
"Please, ignore our weakness and the absolute chaos of this miserable refuge of ours," Sillys requested softly, stopping in the middle of the muddy plaza and looking over her shoulder at the three of us.
Deep, purplish bags, dark as bruises, circled her exhausted eyes.
"All of this here... the dead piled in the back... the continuous suffering... the sleepless nights of terror... I swear to you, it is only temporary."
She maintained her royal posture, but her voice carried the crack of despair.
And every survivor present already knew the truth, even if no one dared say it aloud.
Without an absolute miracle from the gods...
Or without immediate, massive reinforcements from the walls of Lavinsk...
That entire resistance would be devoured and erased from the records of history before the beasts' hibernation returned.
I looked at Laura, who was helping the healers, and at Arthur, who was staring at the destroyed barricade of the camp.
And by some crazy, cruel twist of fate...
The three inexperienced teenagers, who had been sent by the Queen purely and solely to deliver a simple secret message on a scroll, had just marched with their eyes closed straight into the epicenter and heart of a brutal war of survival.